"A coach, mentor, or consultant can work with you to design a program that capitalizes on your existing strengths and minimizes your weaknesses to help you become an elite advisor. It is almost impossible to do this on your own."

Help From a Pro

By John Bowen

Great achievements in life happen twice—first in the mind and then in the real world. To achieve all that you are capable of achieving as a financial professional, you must first be able to envision what you want to achieve with your business and then take the concrete steps that will allow you to reach those goals within a reasonable period of time.

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To be successful at the highest level, there are few things that can help you as much as engaging a coach, mentor, or consultant. Just as elite athletes have coaches who help ensure their best performances, this individual will be a true partner who holds you accountable for living up to your potential. By serving as part advisor, part cheerleader, and part sounding board, this individual can help you to create a vision of what you want your life to be and help you achieve it.

To understand coaching and how it works in a business setting, it's helpful to take a look at how learning traditionally happens in companies. Employees are typically sent off-site to a classroom, undergo a training program where they are taught new skills, and then return to try to apply all of their new knowledge in their old environment.

It turns out, however, that this type of training model has never worked particularly well in the corporate setting. The model fails because when employees return to their old environment, it has so many peculiarities—ways it functions in its own place and context—that frequently people do not transfer their new information and learning from the classroom to their work environment. This makes the efficiency of the training programs low—little transfer of learning ever takes place.

Despite this lack of results, participants usually give their training courses high marks—the classes are fun to take, the trainers are quite good, and often the students feel that they learn a great deal. But when academic studies look at the real results, they commonly find that participants aren't practicing what they have learned. They're practicing a modified version of what they have learned instead, shifting it enough to be less effective than it could have been if they had actually integrated what they learned and practiced it in a more disciplined way.

This is where working with a coach, mentor, or consultant comes in. By helping you with the application of their knowledge, these individuals can turn the theory of what you have learned into reality at the ground level. In the process, most of the slippage in learning that plagues traditional training programs is eliminated. Both you and your business are able to enjoy the full benefits of your new knowledge.

So the entire point of working with a coach, mentor, or consultant is to bridge the gap between learning and doing. The goal is not simply to learn what you need to do, but to make sure that you actually do it. When you have this kind of expert by your side to guide you, you can do what you've learned in the way it is meant to be practiced.

The process works because it is personalized. As I mentioned, training programs just don't account for the unique features of the work environments to which trainees return. In addition, training programs have not been able to take into account the multiple ways in which each person shapes what they learn to make it comfortable for them to use. Training has been a little like teaching someone to play baseball using only a PowerPoint presentation and some role-playing. The new players feel like they learned a lot, but when they go out onto the field, they find that conditions are different, and their performance does not really improve.

In contrast, a coach, mentor, or consultant will be able to observe your individual performance closely and then identify your true gifts. They can also identify areas in which you are lacking skills. Then the coach, mentor, or consultant can work with you to design a program that capitalizes on your existing strengths and minimizes your weaknesses to help you become an elite advisor. It is almost impossible for you to do this on your own.

Mentors, coaches, and consultants all bring unique qualities to the training table. Mentors are the best to work with because the ideal mentor is someone who has already achieved the success that you would like to achieve and wants to help you achieve the same or even greater success. They are already top advisors doing as much (or more) than you hope to do. They have already traveled the road you want to travel and have some great experiences they want to share with you.

Unfortunately, there are just not that many mentors available. Many financial institutions and some trade associations try to foster mentoring, but those programs are usually designed for either those just getting started or those in the middle market. At the high end of the market, finding a mentor really comes down to personal relationships.

If you have a relationship with someone who has already achieved his or her success, then you should definitely consider asking this person to be a mentor. Mentors typically are not compensated at all or at most receive nominal compensation. You'll want to establish some type of formal relationship where you get together and speak on the phone on a regular basis to share the challenges that are facing you and your business.

Unfortunately, most financial advisors will have little or no access to mentors other than for short periods of time. For this reason, you'll probably need to engage either a coach or a consultant.

Coaches may or may not have expertise in the financial world. Instead, they are experts in helping you identify what you want, creating a plan to achieve your goals, and enabling you to keep your energy and focus sustained over time to arrive at your destination. Like a mentor, a coach will typically work with you on a long-term basis. Because most coaches work over the phone, there won't be any geographic restrictions.

Individual coaches who work on an engagement basis charge from $100 to $300 per hour. Corporate coaching programs offered to the financial services industry can run $4,000 and up per year.

Consultants, in contrast, are typically brought in for the short term to solve a specific challenge. These usually involve strategy, marketing, and other types of big-picture items that must be addressed before you and your firm can move forward. These might include the strategic positioning for your firm, the strategic design of your firm, a merger or acquisition, and your technology systems.

Consultants have expertise in areas that you do not and can add greatly to your skill set, particularly in areas that have never been your core competencies. Because consultants will work with you over a defined period on one or more specific challenges, the nature of your relationship with a consultant will be fundamentally different than your relationship with a mentor or coach.

Consultants typically charge by the project or by the day. Per-day fees working with financial advisors can range from $1,500 to $5,000 or more.

If a coach or mentor is part of your solution, you should keep the following points in mind as you talk to candidates:

The relationship is key. The coach or the mentor should not be the center of attention. You are. You should feel powerful in this context and recharged at each session. This will help you sustain your momentum between meetings.

You should feel safe and courageous with your coach or mentor. That means that you should be willing to explore ideas and opportunities that normally you would avoid. You must be willing to take risks with this person. Only when you are willing to take risks will new opportunities open for you.

The relationship must be confidential. Anything that is said between you and the coach or mentor is confidential and should not be shared with anyone else without your permission.

There must be trust on both sides. You must believe that the coach or mentor is truly on your side and believes that you will do what you say you will do.

There must be honesty. The coaching or mentoring relationship must be one in which you are able to tell the whole truth about yourself without concern about looking good or being judged. You should also expect your coach or mentor to tell you the unvarnished truth as they see it about you. The relationship is not about being nice. It's about being direct.

The coach or mentor should be able to make bold requests and, at the same time, not be attached to the outcomes. The outcomes of the process belong to you. The job of a coach or a mentor is to help you achieve the ones you choose.

If you have decided to work with a consultant, consider these issues:

• Look for someone who has demonstrated success in working with firms that look like yours do.
• Just like top advisors, the best consultants get their business through relationship marketing, especially referrals from peers or financial institutions or through strategic alliances. You'll want to find your consultant this way, too.
• Don't work with consultants who do not have industry-specific experience—you will end up paying them to learn on your time.

Few great things are ever accomplished by one person working alone. To maximize your probability for success, enlist an expert on your side. An ongoing relationship with an industry mentor, coach, or consultant who will keep you on the right track to achieve your goals is essential for you to be all that you are capable of being.

Sources for Coaches, Mentors and Consultants

The Professional Coaches and Mentors Association (PCMA) (www.pcmaonline.com) is an association designed to help business people. Most of its members are senior people with PhDs who have a high degree of professionalism and are typically of a higher grade than ICF members.

The International Coach Federation (ICF) (www.coachfederation.org) is a worldwide professional association of more than 5,000 business and personal coaches. It offers a free referral service, and lists many coaches, including those who specialize in financial services and business development, on its Web site.